How far is Stefan Struve from a UFC heavyweight title shot? What does Charlie Brenneman’s recent release tell us? And how can the UFC revive “The Ultimate Fighter?”

In our latest installment of Twitter Mailbag, MMAjunkie.com’s Ben Fowlkes sounds off on those topics and many more, including Michael Bisping and Brad Pickett’s championship chances.

Check out all the questions below, and submit your own at @BenFowlkesMMA.

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Jordan K @SlayKatzNY
@benfowlkesMMA #TMB Given the relatively thin HW division, how far is Struve from a title shot and what’s the ceiling on this kid?

Brother, if you think the UFC’s heavyweight division is thin now, it must have looked downright anorexic to you back in 2007. With fighters such as Junior Dos Santos, Cain Velasquez, Alistair Overeem, Daniel Cormier and Fabricio Werdum, I’d say it’s more competitive and interesting now that it’s ever been. Maybe five years ago a 7-footer with a four-fight win streak would have been immediately penciled in for a title shot. Now it’s a far more crowded field.

Struve seems to think that his win over Stipe Miocic makes him a top-five heavyweight. Obviously, rankings are just opinions in MMA, and Struve is entitled to his own, but if you go back and look at the five heavyweights I listed in the previous paragraph, it’s hard to make the case that he’s done anything yet that would knock any one of them off the list. But hey, two fights from now, if he keeps improving and notches wins over some more established heavyweights, who knows? If you told me Struve would be a heavyweight champion within the next five years, I wouldn’t find that so impossible to believe.

Duncan Priebe @DuncanPriebe
@benfowlkesMMA I know this is an FX show, but how did Justin Edwards get on the main card ahead of Castillo, Stephens, Hallman, etc.? #tmb

I have no idea. Maybe it’s another attempt by the UFC to get fans to freak out about not having access to FUEL TV, where they could watch such awesome prelim fights as Jeremy Stephens vs. Yves Edwards, among others. Maybe it’s just a sign that somebody at the UFC really loves them some Josh Neer. I don’t know, but I’m as mystified by it as you are.

Karan Ruprah @KSR_16
@benfowlkesMMA #TMB Do you believe all the trash talking between 2 fighters actually have a major effect on how they fight

Good point, Lou. I suppose now is as good a time as any to revisit the UFC’s hazy standards on this issue. Just this past weekend we saw Dan Hardy, a fighter who lost four straight fights, rebound with his second consecutive win. He got more chances to rebound than most UFC fighters get, because, according to Lorenzo Fertitta, the UFC likes guys “that WAR!!!” I realize Brenneman isn’t quite the stand-up bungalow-thrower that Hardy is, but I also don’t think you can call him a boring fighter. Plus, as you point out, it was just over a year ago that he was stepping in on short notice for the UFC and being hailed as a real-life “Rocky” story. Where’s the love now?

Brenneman got cut after losing two in a row and three of his past four. In fairness, this most recent loss came after a somewhat questionable stoppage against Kyle Noke, and the loss before that came against Erick Silva, who seems like he might be pretty freaking good. That’s not to say that we should wipe those losses off the board for Brenneman, but it’s not as if he’s getting knocked out by nobodies here. If the UFC cuts him after two losses to two tough guys, all just a little over a year after he did the organization a big favor, what does that tell the other guys on the roster? What have we learned about the true value of doing favors?

We’ll get into this a little more when we talk about the politics of turning down fights later in this mailbag, but this is another instance of the UFC’s mixed messages for fighters. We like guys that war, but if you get knocked out while warring you may or may not be out of a job. We hate guys who play it safe just to get a win, but wins pay twice as much and will keep you off the unemployment line. We need guys who will say yes when we ask for a favor, but if you say no we reserve the right to put your business in the streets in the least generous way possible. There’s a lot of inequity built into that fighter-promoter relationship, and at least some of it seems to be by design. I’m not sure how the fighters make sense of it at times. I wonder if Brenneman is still trying.

If we take Daniel Cormier and Josh Barnett off the list, since the Strikeforce heavyweight division is a dead-end road no matter what else happens, I’d go with Gilbert Melendez as my first choice and Luke Rockhold as my second. I think they both bring some fresh blood to their respective divisions, and it kills me to think they may be wasting the best years of their fighting lives in Strikeforce, where the climb to the top of the hill is short and the view unremarkable.

Fight Scotland @FightScotland
@benfowlkesMMA Hardy & Bisping both looked impressive in their recent wins, but will they ever be good enough to win and def a title? #tmb

I like Michael Bisping’s chances better than Dan Hardy’s, but only if Anderson Silva retires or makes the permanent move to light heavyweight first.

Sly @SlyBoston
@benfowlkesMMA #TMB What do you think of a finish based only card? If noone is sub’d or KO’d then there is no winner. Like some JJ tourneys.

Back when I was a crazed boxing fan, but before I realized that boxing was committed to almost never giving its fans the fights they want while they’re still relevant, I used to argue for exactly this type of rule change in that sport. Then I read some books about the era of boxing when they followed more or less that type of model, and I realized it didn’t seem so great in practice. You might think this would up the number of finishes, maybe inject a new sense of urgency into each round of each fight, and to some extent you’d be right. But mostly this would increase the number of draws, drastically, and that wouldn’t be so much fun. It would also present a matchmaking disaster since what do you do with a bunch of fighters who are all coming off draws? Have they moved up or down? Do they have to keep fighting each other until somebody breaks? That might be a cool premise for an MMA-themed “Twilight Zone” episode, but not so great in real life.

Daniel Rubenstein @dannyrube
@benfowlkesMMA …Fine, heres my good question: Are there any coaches that can revive the TUF franchise? (for the record, my vote is Daniel Cormier vs Jon Jones. You can use that in your article.)

Of all the things that are keeping me from getting excited about watching yet another season of “The Ultimate Fighter,” coach selection is pretty low on the list. That’s not to say it’s impossible to revive some interest, even if only temporarily, by choosing more interesting coaches. For instance, I think a lot of people would tune in to see Chael Sonnen do his thing once a week. I know I’d love to watch Nick and Nate Diaz attempt to impart their own brand of fighting wisdom to some young up-and-comers. And, as someone who has watched Daniel Cormier run a kids wrestling practice like it’s the damn U.S. Olympic team, I wouldn’t mind seeing him yell at a bunch of grown men in exactly the same fashion.

Thing is, that’s not going to sustain me for a whole season. I’d love to see Cormier and Jon Jones fight each other, and would even tune in every now and then to see what their dynamic is like on the show, but the coaches have relatively little direct contact with each other on “TUF.” It’s not as if Cormier and Jones would be partnering up on “The Amazing Race” here. If the show is just a long promo for the fight, why wouldn’t I wait until the fight rolls around (assuming nobody gets hurt first) and then spend the afternoon before the pay-per-view watching the highlights from their time in a Vegas warehouse together?

David Neighbor @dneighbor
@benfowlkesMMA #tmb Will Bellator’s average ratings now double by the end of 2013 on Spike? If so, how will that impact the MMA landscape?

To the reader who asked me last week whether fans really care about TV ratings, here’s your answer. Not only do some fans care, they want me to peer into the future and tell them what TV ratings will look like more than a year from now. I can’t do that because I am not a gypsy fortuneteller, sadly. What I can tell you is that Bellator’s ratings have to improve on Spike TV, which is still fixed in the minds of many channel-surfing sports fans as a place to happen upon some MMA action. MTV2? Yeah, not so much. Right now most fans have to know enough to seek out Bellator. Once it’s on Spike TV, it won’t have that problem. Does that drastically alter the MMA landscape all at once? Probably not. But at least it provides greater exposure for Bellator fighters, and hopefully better money.

“Lack of privacy” is an interesting term for when your boss publicly questions your courage and your intelligence in the media. It’s definitely a lack of something. Respect, maybe? Discretion? I’m not sure, but whatever you want to call it, it is a bit hypocritical for Dana White, who expects fighters to keep certain issues and complaints and negotiations under wraps, to intentionally air their business when it suits his needs.

I wrote a long piece recently about how the matchmaking sausage is made in the UFC and what goes through the minds of managers trying to weigh the ups and downs of accepting or turning down a fight. Most told me that they didn’t worry too much about being pilloried in the media for turning down a fight, but that in general they’d found that the best thing to do was not turn down fights if they could possibly help it. When White rushes to tell reporters which fighters have avoided which fights, and when he follows that up with his own opinions on what a bad idea it was for them to do so, it’s hard not to see that as a warning to other fighters who might be thinking about picking their battles a little more carefully.

Does that make the UFC look “low-rent?” I’m not sure I’d go that far, but it is an odd way of motivating your employees. I can understand why Matt Mitrione turned down a fight with Cormier. If his wrestling isn’t good enough to contend with a former Olympic team captain (and it isn’t), he’s not doing himself any favors by going in there and taking a loss. Sure, he might earn some ‘atta boy points with the UFC, but you can ask Charlie Brenneman what that’s worth. The way to advance your career as an MMA fighter is to win fights. If Mitrione takes a fight he doesn’t think he can win, all just because he’s scared his boss will call him out in the media if he doesn’t, whose interests does that serve? I’ll give you a hint: It ain’t “Meathead’s.”

If Michael Bisping is reading this (and I assume he is), right about now he’s probably looking you up on Twitter so he can yell at you. But in answer to your question, I like Pickett’s chances about as well as I like Bisping’s. Against the current champs in their respective divisions, I think they’d both have a tough go of it. But if something changes at the top, for whatever reason, then their title hopes start to look a little more realistic.

Topher James @BostonStallion5
@benfowlkesMMA if you’re life was on the line and you had to bet on one fight for survival, would it be Anderson beating Bonnar?

I can’t imagine a situation where my life would depend on the outcome of an MMA fight, and frankly the premise of the question unnerves me, only more so because it comes from someone with the Twitter handle BostonStallion5 (what, was BostonStallion69 already taken?). But OK, in some sort of “Hunger Games” version of the future, I guess I’d feel almost comfortable staking my life on an Anderson Silva victory. I don’t question Stephan Bonnar’s toughness or heart for a second, but I just don’t see how he wins this. Too many holes, and too few offensive weapons. Now please don’t kill me if I’m wrong.

Ryan Denison @rdenison13
@benfowlkesMMA How surprised should we really be at all the trt in mma considering how often these guys get kicked in the nuts? #tmb

Oh, so that’s the new specious explanation for the supposed scourge of low testosterone levels in MMA? For a little while it was weight-cutting that was to blame. Before that, it was head trauma. Now it’s groin shots. What’s next, overexposure to tattoo ink?

Look, if you want to believe that all these muscular pro athletes are genuinely suffering from chronically, abnormally low levels of the hormone that is necessary to become a muscular pro athlete in the first place, fine. I guess you can tell yourself that a few kicks to the pills on a guy wearing a cup will cause testosterone levels to plummet and never rise again. I mean, past steroid abuse would be a more likely explanation, according to several respected endocrinologists I’ve spoken to – and then there’s always the chance that (gasp!) at least some of these fighters (and/or their personal physicians, who are almost never endocrinologists themselves) are simply lying about having low testosterone in the first place – but if that explanation doesn’t suit you, I guess testicle-kicking is as good a fake culprit as any. Just now that you’re opening the door to another rant from Joe Rogan about how all MMA fighters should be wearing a different kind of cup.

Tony Fortune, Ph.D. @toneloc2424
@benfowlkesMMA Can we expect another multiple part series like “The Hurt Business”? We’ve been waiting Fowlkes. #TMB

At the risk of sounding like a crying crybaby, dude, that stuff is hard. It took a really long time to do, and the final product clocked in at around 80,000 words (not counting pages and pages of scribbled notes, unused Word documents, and observations on bar napkins). Thinking about doing another one of those just makes me tired right now. Plus, my wife is going to have a baby in January. If I told her I was planning to spend the next year in and out of some distant gym – in addition to my normal event-related travel – she’d probably murder me on the spot. I wouldn’t blame her, either.

Joshua Nelson @fitdabattle
@benfowlkesMMA who the heck is Gunnar Nelson and why did he look so amazing?

I assume you’re asking about Icelandic MMA fighter Gunnar Nelson and not the American musician of the same name who formed one half of the band Nelson. I assume this mostly because, c’mon, anybody who lived through the ’90s knows Nelson. As for the Icelandic fighter, he’s primarily a jiu-jitsu guy. He’s got a black belt from Renzo Gracie. He made some waves in all the big grappling tournaments and has been slowly building up his MMA credentials since 2007. Why did he look “so amazing,” you ask? In part because he’s a really good grappler, but it also didn’t hurt to be going up against DaMarques Johnson, who took the fight on short notice after being out with a medical suspension following his knockout loss to Mike Swick in August. I say we hold off on freaking out about this Gunnar Nelson until he faces a UFC vet who’s had a full camp to prepare for him. The other Gunnar Nelson? Freak out about him all you want.

Charlie @cml21
@benfowlkesMMA Is it just me, or is @Jon_Anik criminally underutilized by the @UFC? #tmb

It’s not just you.

Deadpanda @DeadpandaCP
@benfowlkesMMA #TMB Does anyone besides BJ think that BJ is going to be safe against Rory? Looking at BJ’s last 5 fights I’m worried for him

Before we get all doom and gloom here, it’s worth pointing out that B.J. Penn’s past five fights include a knockout of Matt Hughes, a draw against Jon Fitch, and a couple close decision losses to Frankie Edgar. Not too shabby, really. Rory MacDonald, meanwhile, is coming off a beatdown of Che Mills, which is not nearly so impressive a feat as the UFC commentary team attempted to make it sound.

But OK, I agree that it was probably a bad idea for Penn to abandon his brief attempt at retirement just to give MacDonald the chance to make his name off him, which is exactly what I think will happen. Am I worried about Penn’s safety in this fight? Not especially. I think he’ll lose, and losing in MMA usually means you get beat up at least a little bit. But I think Penn can still hold his own well enough to make a fight of it. I just don’t know why he feels the need to after everything he’s accomplished.

Jeremy Shepherd @shepherd840
@benfowlkesMMA the live UFC show feels old and recycled. What do you think can be done to revamp the live presentation? #TMB

Revamping the look and feel of a live UFC event seems like the MMA equivalent of putting a bunch of gadgets on a can of beer to make it flow better or get cold faster. The focus should be on substance rather than style. One of the UFC’s strengths is that it’s been in the live event business long enough to know exactly what it’s doing. That’s why the UFC’s shows run so much more smoothly, both in the arena and on TV, than any other organization’s. As a fight fan, I don’t need fireworks or dancing girls. I need you to get out the way and show me good fights. For the most part, the UFC does that. Let’s hope it continues to do so.

Pedro Figueiredo @pedromfdo
Hey @benfowlkesMMA how do u like Struve vs Barnett in his last SF fight?

Actually, that’s the best idea I’ve heard for either man’s next fight. You’ve done it again, Pedro the Wolf.

Christopher Cheung @christopher_kit
@benfowlkesMMA what is your greatest fear for the UFC

Giant spiders. Wait, sorry, didn’t see the “for the UFC” part of the question until now. On that front, I’d have to say that overexposure and overextension are legitimate concerns. So is the use of performance-enhancing drugs, such as testosterone, among fighters.

But my biggest fear? I think it’s that, as the MMA superstars of the past slip into their golden years, we’ll find out that they have all the same problems that old boxers and football players have. Then we’ll have to rethink that whole “MMA is safer than sport x” line we’ve been feeding to each other. Maybe the only reason it seems so now is because there’s not enough long-term case studies in the effects of MMA on the body and brain. I also worry that a lot of fighters think they have more money than they really do, and will wind up broke and broken down a few years after retiring. It happens in other sports, including ones where they cash much bigger checks. If we start to see all the same stuff befalling MMA fighters, and if there’s no safety net like the one provided by players’ unions in other sports, I fear it might become a lot harder to enjoy this sport with a clean conscience.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie.com and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @BenFowlkesMMA. Twitter Mailbag appears every Thursday on MMAjunkie.com.

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